This roused my curiosity. I never knew that Cronin played catcher at any level of competition, but sure enough, BBRef says that he played behind the plate for 90 games when he was with New Haven of the Eastern League in 1926. But that didn't make any sense, as that was the only year that he is ever listed as playing catcher.
So I dug through some old issues of
The Sporting News online and there's no mention of Cronin during 1925-27 playing any position other than second base, which is where he was being considered by the Pirates. But I also found a mention of a guy named Cronin who was a catcher for the Providence club of the EL in the same year - 1926. Turns out this was
Bill Cronin, a catcher who had a long career in the minors and who played briefly in the majors. But BBRef shows that, in 1926, he played all year at shortstop.
Well, that doesn't make any sense either. Bill Cronin played his entire career as a catcher, except for one year in the EL, when BBRef says he played all season as a shortstop, while Joe Cronin played almost his entire career as an infielder, except for that same year in the EL, when he played all season as a catcher. To me, the conclusion is fairly obvious: BBRef got Bill Cronin's stats mixed up with Joe Cronin's stats. A check of the
New Haven stats for that year seem to bear that out. New Haven has three catchers listed as playing a total of 246 games, which is about 90 games more than the team played that year. On the other hand, there's only 38 games listed for shortstop, which is about 100 games shy of the team total (I don't have the EL schedule or final standings for 1926, but in 1925 and 1927 the EL schedule was 154 games).
I am reasonably confident, therefore, that Joe Cronin
never played catcher, and that he probably played shortstop for New Haven in 1926, while Bill Cronin played catcher all season for Providence. QED. BBRef, consequently, is wrong, which means that OOTP is too. I'll drop a note to the historical rosters team so that this can be corrected in time for the next version of the game.